Evan Bloom

Please join the Ocean Diplomacy Working Group (ODWG), the Rethinking Diplomacy Program’s Space Diplomacy Lab (SDL) and the Duke Marine Lab for a conversation about treaties and governance in extraterritorial areas from the Antarctic to the Moon with Evan T. Bloom, polar expert, lawyer, former senior diplomat, and currently Global Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute. We will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of consensus-based decision making in treaties, how geopolitics influences Antarctic conservation, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), and the Antarctic Treaty’s commercial mining ban.  We believe diplomacy in Antarctica might be instructive for diplomats working on issues related to the commercialization of space and potential resource extraction activities on the Moon and other celestial bodies in the context of the US-lead Artemis Accords.

The event will take place on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 at 1:30 PM in the Sanford 04, Sanford School of Public Policy (201 Science Drive, Durham, NC 27708).

Guest Speaker:

Evan T. Bloom served at the U.S. Department of State from 1991 to 2020 where, among other roles, he served as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and Fisheries, Director of the Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs, and was a member of the federal Senior Executive Service.  Among his many accomplishments, Mr. Bloom helped establish the Arctic Council, supervising U.S. representation in the Council from 2006 to 2020, and led the U.S. delegation to high seas treaty negotiations (biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction) at the UN from 2016-2020.

As a member of the Office of the Legal Adviser, Bloom was the State Department’s space law adviser from 1996-2002, during which he participated, inter alia, in the negotiation of the multilateral treaty concerning operation of the International Space Station.

Bloom is currently a global fellow at the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute in Washington, DC, senior advisor to the Centre for the Ocean and the Arctic, Marine Protected Area Advisor to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, and Polar Governance Chair at the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies. He is co-editor of the Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Polar Law (forthcoming 2025). Mr. Bloom is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Fellow of the Explorers Club.  He holds degrees from Princeton University (AB) and Columbia Law School (JD).

Discussants:

Ally Kristan is a member of the Rethinking Diplomacy Program’s Ocean Diplomacy Working Group. Ally served as a U.S. National Science Foundation Antarctic Environmental Policy Fellow from 2022-2025, where she was part of the U.S. Delegation to the Antarctic Treaty Meeting. Ally assisted the U.S. Delegation to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources and deployed to McMurdo Station in Antarctica in an environmental oversight role. She began her career researching Antarctic penguin ecology at UNC Wilmington and Louisiana State University and now manages a marine mammal conservation lab under Dr. Andy Read at the Duke Marine Lab in Beaufort, NC. Ally works with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other colleagues on Antarctic issues related to wildlife, tourism, and protected areas.

Harrison Schreiber is a student in the Master of Public Policy at the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy studying global security and a Fellow at the Space Diplomacy Lab (SDL).  Prior to coming to Duke, Harrison worked as a consultant in the aerospace and defense sector.

Dr. Giovanni Zanalda is the Director of the Rethinking Diplomacy Program and co-founder of the Space Diplomacy Lab. He is a Professor of the Practice in the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI), Department of Economics, and Department of History. He teaches and conducts research on Emerging Markets, Financial Crises, Space Economics, and Space Policy/diplomacy.

This event is being organized by the Duke Rethinking Diplomacy Program’s Space Diplomacy Lab and Ocean Diplomacy Working Group with support from the Duke University Marine Lab, the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment, the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy, and the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy. Please contact rethinking.diplomacy@duke.edu with any questions about this event.